PC or ‘Fear Not’

October 31, 2011

It would be easy to declare that I think political correctness should be declared un-American and if I know the least little bit about what the founding fathers had in mind, it is also unconstitutional.

You will forgive me for using Franklin D. Roosevelt’s quote just one more time. Roosevelt said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Well over 100 times in the Bible the term ‘fear not’ is used and other variants of this phrase are seen over 200 times. I don’t know how much Bible reading Roosevelt did but I know that most Americans have accepted this maxim as the best possible way to get a victory over adversity and what may seem like insurmountable opposition.

Fear is to political correctness what patriotism is to emboldened telling and doing of what is true. Have we lost this powerful source of strength and guidance under the turbulence and roaring of a dark cloud of sensitivity training from the far left advancing under the banner of the new PC?

Are we getting faked, conned, scammed or worse? Completely, is the short answer but let’s examine the elements and workings of this snake oil elixir which is now being pedaled to us as the cultural equivalent of ‘respect for all people.’

To start with no one can be called a hater who is guided by Christ’s words such as “Love your enemies” (Mt 5: 44) or the rarefied words of the Apostle John who said “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 Jn 4: 20) Or can they?

In today’s world of PC claptrap and mushy baseline acceptance of anything that other people do or say, you are a hater if you do not snap to attention in a visibly compliant and neutral mode, and without so much as the raising of an eyebrow, show complete and full acceptance of anything spoken, or proposed. This is translated as respect, everyone is happy, and we move on in our fantasy world of rainbows and unicorns without a whimper or a glitch.

Broad acceptance of the miracle powers of PC is best seen in the contrast between concepts of the PC bound and the PC free. Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book on what it takes to raise a child entitled, “It takes a Village:…” is now in stark contrast to her idea that one lone Secretary of State can bounce around the world with an arsenal of worn out dialogue, rhetoric and tripe about a world on the verge of welcoming democracy and thereby bring peace to both the children and the adults of a world on the brink of a final world war. We are told in lifeless, but glowing terms that Libya is now free from all tyranny at the death of Gaddafi, but no mention is made of Libya’s choice to become Sharia compliant and part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Here we may want to use the tired but perfectly suitable cliché about jumping out of the frying pan, directly into the fire. To the Coptic Christians of Egypt, Pastor Youcef of Iran and the three thousand slain in Syria, Hillary may as well be a ghost and her pronouncements could be called history in reverse. Now Libya is free to pass back into the seventh century.

It illustrates one of the most serious problems with PC. Like any refusal to weigh the truth of a thing by its fruit, PC is beleaguered by its own inability see that the lack of success can never be fully dealt with without first acknowledging that something is, and has been, consistently failing. Anything less than this conclusion; falls somewhere between wishful thinking and denial.

From the lofty planes of self acknowledged enlightenment, the pompous are bound to deny that when an enemy is basically evil and wants to see you gone, dead or reduced to never existed, any diplomacy aimed at winning hearts is a mere dialogue with the devil.

Herein is what I and millions of others will hold as the greatest most misunderstood mystery of all time. The preaching of the gospel, if seen correctly, is aimed at changing the heart, before any other external motive or purpose. It doesn’t speak to a man’s culture, religion, politics or personal behavior, While it has the power to change all those things it has no chance unless the heart is first changed and renewed with what we in Christendom call a Kingdom view.

The gospel is for individuals; it is not a broad spectrum kind of do good, and be nice smattering of religious principles followed by rules, doctrinal confusion and ceremonial constraints. It is an encounter with God that allows you to take him on in your life while he renews and invigorates your heretofore dead senses. It is heart medicine that completely heals once and for all the condition of man he is always least likely to acknowledge.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Cor 5: 17)

The hardest thing to explain to the world is that it is not our volume, strength or active external demonstration that gets us connected to God. It is, and always will be, something that stems from a historical event. That event is the birth, life, miracles, gospel message, death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Belief, religion, sincerity, austerity, sacrifice, ceremony, liturgy, doctrinal purity, dreams, visions epiphanies, theophany and Christophany can actually get in the way of, and in some cases literally cancel the possibility of having an encounter with God. Religions never seem to get this but under the new wave of PC acceptance the world would have us to believe that it will. We erroneously continue to believe that what makes a religion real or great is our belief in it, rather than God’s actual revelation of himself in time and space. Good luck with that.

We must dialogue with those in the religion of peace (Islam) because their belief is as good as ours and it shows respect. We no longer have the right to just respect the Muslims who after all like us are created in the image of God. Now we are told we have to respect their religion as well.

If we see it has no foundation in truth, has cruel and oppressive practices or if it is something we simply cannot accept we are labeled as haters, Islamophobes, anti-religious, discriminatory or closed minded. Here is where PC is a direct affront to conscience. You remember; that’s the stuff our founding fathers said every man in this nation would not be denied.

Psychiatry has convinced us that fear is just another word for anger. I for one don’t believe this is always true but before I or anyone else has had much time to challenge that assertion, now hatred has been added to the equation. For the moderns it is like the nativity of all PC; it is the birth of the great controlling, benevolent and life changing principle that proposes to change the world.

If you don’t accept the culture, religion or politics of others, you are afraid, therefore you are angry and of course you are a hater. From this is born terms like homophobic, Islamaphobic and dozens of similar terms. Fear of being labeled one of these becomes the only real fear produced by the entire absurd equation. Lives, careers, callings, families and much more can be brought to an ignominious end under one of the dreaded labels.

Integrity, although often ignored is the God given ability to put matters into their proper place without letting them blur or bleed together into an incomprehensible and depressing conglomerate of ideas and emotions that overwhelm us. Put simply, I can love a Muslim but completely reject Islam; I can love a homosexual but totally reject his choice to be gay. It is integrity that allows me to do this but PC that tells me that I can’t.

My equation says that blind adherence to PC robs a man of basic God given integrity; what follows is a loss of dignity, reason, common sense and sadly, all that is left is to be fearful.

Roosevelt hit the nail squarely on the head. It is fear alone that we need to fear. The brightest, bravest and most successful people this country has ever produced decided not to fear. Is this a day to begin being crippled by fear?

If we do lay down our disdain and offense with what is false because we are afraid that it may be interpreted as hatred for certain people or beliefs, then we have been reduced to cowards. It is amazing that the Greek word ‘deilos’ or cowardly is translated as fearful in the last book of the Bible. The fearful appear along with others who will be denied access to the eternal presence of God on the final day. Those who deal in fear and promote fear in man are making the most costly mistake. Political correctness is a war of fear; that only the fearful will lose.

“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” (Rev 21: 8)

Michael Bresciani is the publisher of American Prophet.org since 2005. The website features the articles and reports of Rev Bresciani along with some of America’s best writers and journalists, news and reviews that have earned the site the title of "The Website for Insight." Millions have read his timely reports and articles in online journals and print publications across the nation and the globe. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook!